Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  141. John A. Dahlgren diary, copy, Nicolay Papers, DLC (entry for 19 Apr. 1862).

  142. New York Times, 8 June 1860.

  143. Springfield correspondence by John Hay, 21 May, Providence, Rhode Island, Journal, 26 May 1860, Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860–1864 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 2.

  144. Paul M. Angle, “Here I Have Lived:” A History of Lincoln’s Springfield (Springfield, IL.: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1935), 237.

  Chapter 16. “I Have Been Elected Mainly on the Cry ‘Honest Old Abe’”

  1. Giddings to Lincoln, Chicago, 19 May 1860, AL MSS DLC.

  2. The Independent (New York), 24 May 1860.

  3. Speech at Rochester, n.d., quoted in the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 5 June 1860.

  4. New York Times, 28 May 1860.

  5. Cincinnati Commercial, 19 May 1860.

  6. Charles H. Brown, William Cullen Bryant (New York: Scribner, 1971), 418.

  7. Chicago correspondence by Samuel Bowles, 16 May, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 19 May 1860; “Abraham Lincoln as a Candidate,” ibid., 26 May 1860.

  8. Concord New Hampshire Statesman, 26 May, 14 July 1860, in Lex Renda, Running on the Record: Civil War-Era Politics in New Hampshire (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 91–92.

  9. Hartford Courant, 24 May 1860.

  10. J. K. Moorhead, interview with John G. Nicolay, Washington, 12 and 13 May 1880, Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 41.

  11. A. L. Chetlain to Elihu B. Washburne, Galena, 23 May 1860, Elihu B. Washburne Papers, DLC.

  12. Springfield correspondence, 4 Sept., New York Evening Post, 8 Sept. 1860.

  13. Albany correspondence, 18 Feb., New York Herald, 19 Feb. 1861.

  14. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong, 1835–1875 (4 vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1952), 3:33 (entry for 16 June 1860).

  15. Hamilton Fish to Lt. Henry A. Wise, New York, 24 May 1860, letterbooks, Fish Papers, DLC.

  16. Schuyler Colfax to Charles M. Heaton, Washington, 21 May 1860, Colfax Papers, Northern Indiana Center for History, South Bend.

  17. William P. Fessenden to Elizabeth Warriner, Washington, 20 and 27 May 1860, Fessenden Family Papers, Bowdoin College.

  18. Washington correspondence, 18 and 19 May, Chicago Press and Tribune, 23 and 24 May 1860.

  19. Charles Francis Adams, diary entry for 18 May 1860, Adams Family Papers, MHi.

  20. Springfield correspondence by Henry Villard, Cincinnati Commercial, n.d., copied in the New York Times, 27 Dec. 1860.

  21. The New Haven Palladium, New York Courier and Enquirer, Boston Atlas and Bee, and New York Evening Post, all quoted in “Voice of the Republican Press,” Albany Evening Journal, 22 May 1860.

  22. Washington Constitution, 6 Sept. 1860, in Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession (2 vols.; New York: D. Appleton, 1942), 1:34; Chicago Herald, 21 May 1860; New York Herald, 19, 22, and 30 May, 28 Aug., 6 and 8 Sept. 1860; Washington Constitution, n.d., copied in the Albany Evening Journal, 23 May 1860; Boston Courier, n.d., quoted in the New York Tribune, 24 May 1860; Freeman’s Journal (New York), 26 May 1860; Hartford Times, n.d., quoted in the Hartford Courant, 23 May 1860.

  23. Philadelphia Evening Journal, n.d., copied in the New York Tribune, 24 May 1860.

  24. An “old gentleman residing in this city [Chicago] who was a companion of Lincoln in all the early political struggles of the State,” interviewed by a correspondent of the New York Herald, Chicago correspondence, 30 May, New York Herald, 19 June 1860.

  25. New York Herald, 22 May 1860.

  26. Quoted in Hans L. Trefousse, First Among Equals: Abraham Lincoln’s Reputation during His Administration (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 4.

  27. New York Herald, 22 May 1860.

  28. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 24 Aug. 1860.

  29. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session, Appendix, 334 (19 May 1860).

  30. Speech of J. L. D. Morrison, 2 June 1860, Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 4 June 1860.

  31. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 19 Sept. 1860.

  32. Chicago correspondence, 12 June, New York Herald, 26 June 1860.

  33. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 28 July 1860.

  34. John Cochrane, speech in New York, 8 Oct., New York Times, 9 Oct. 1860.

  35. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 17 July, 22 Aug. 1860.

  36. Campaign Plain Dealer (Cleveland), 1 Sept. 1860.

  37. Charleston, South Carolina, Courier, n.d., quoted in the New York Tribune, 23 May 1860; Augusta Dispatch, n.d., copied in the New York Herald, 8 June 1860; Newberry, South Carolina, Rising Sun, n.d., quoted in Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 229; Newbern, North Carolina, Weekly Progress, 29 May 1860, quoted in Donald E. Reynolds, Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1970), 57–58; John Rutherford to “My dear Hawkeley,” Richmond, 19 Dec. 1860, Rutherford Papers, Duke University, typescript, Allan Nevins Papers, Columbia University.

  38. John L. Manning to his wife, 29 May 1860, quoted in Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 230.

  39. Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 22 May 1860.

  40. Letter by “National Democrat,” n.p., n.d., Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 1 June 1860.

  41. Corsicana (Texas) Navarro Express, 2 June 1860; Richmond Enquirer, 17 Aug. 1860; Montgomery Weekly Mail, 26 Oct. 1860, all quoted in Reynolds, Editors Make War, 58–59, 124, 125–126.

  42. J. Henly Smith to Alexander H. Stephens, Washington, 19 May 1860, Stephens Papers, DLC.

  43. H. G. Warner to Douglas, Rochester Bank, New York, 19 May 1860, Douglas Papers, University of Chicago.

  44. New Orleans Crescent, n.d., copied in the New York Tribune, 28 May 1860.

  45. Paris, Kentucky, Citizen, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 2 June 1860.

  46. Washington correspondence, 18 May, New York Herald, 19 May 1860.

  47. J. G. Wright to Douglas, Chicago, 18 May 1860, and G. W. Sheahan to Douglas, Chicago, 21 May 1860, Douglas Papers, University of Chicago.

  48. Douglass’s Monthly 3 (June 1860):276.

  49. Speech at Geneva, New York, 1 Aug. 1860, John W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews (5 vols.; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–1992), 3:381–382.

  50. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, CT: Park Publishing Co., 1881), 399.

  51. Giddings to George W. Julian, Jefferson, [Ohio], 25 May 1860, Giddings-Julian Papers, DLC; Giddings to John Allison, Jefferson, Ohio, 25 Dec. 1860, AL MSS DLC.

  52. The Independent (New York), 10 and 24 May 1860.

  53. Saint Cloud (Minnesota) Democrat, 31 May 1860, in Sylvia D. Hoffert, Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, 1815–1884 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 124.

  54. Child to Sumner, Wayland, 27 May 1860, Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817–1880, ed. Milton Meltzer and Patricia G. Holland (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 352.

  55. James R. Doolittle to his wife, 29 May and 26 June 1860, Doolittle Papers, in William Ernest Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (2 vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1933), 1:485.

  56. Grimes to his wife, Washington, 4 June 1860, William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, Governor of Iowa, 1854–1858, A Senator of the United States, 1859–1869 (New York: D. Appleton, 1876), 128.

  57. Ralph Emerson, “Mr. & Mrs. Ralph Emerson’s Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln” (pamphlet; Rockf
ord, IL: privately printed, 1909), 13.

  58. Gerrit Smith to Giddings, Peterboro, New York, 2 June 1860, Giddings Papers, Ohio Historical Society.

  59. Boston correspondence, 7 July, New York Tribune, 9 July 1860.

  60. Charles Grandison Finney in the Oberlin Evangelist, 1860, quoted in Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 246.

  61. The Liberator (Boston), 7 Sept. 1860.

  62. Principia, 2 June 1860, in James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 17.

  63. Principia, 26 May 1860, in M. Leon Perkal, “William Goodell: A Life of Reform” (Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1972), 297.

  64. W. A. Hunter to William Goodell, 13 June 1860, in Principia, 21 July 1860, in McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 17.

  65. John B. Edwards to Gerrit Smith, 11 July 1860, in Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (New York: Russell and Russell, 1939), 427.

  66. John W. [Windham?] to Gerrit Smith, Lexington, Illinois, 25 Aug. 1860, William Lloyd Garrison Papers, Boston Public Library.

  67. Green to Elizur Wright, n.p., n.d., in Philip G. Wright and Elizabeth Q. Wright, Elizur Wright, the Father of Life Insurance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), 212.

  68. Stephen S. Foster in The Liberator (Boston), 15 June 1860; C[harles] A. H[ammond] to Frederick Douglass, n.p., n.d., Douglass’s Monthly 3 (Oct. 1860):343.

  69. Parker Pillsbury, speech at Framingham, Massachusetts, 4 July 1860, The Liberator (Boston), 20 July 1860.

  70. National Anti-Slavery Standard, 13 Oct. 1860.

  71. Johnson to J. Miller McKim, n.p., 8 Nov. and 11 Oct. 1860, Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Manuscript Collection, Cornell University.

  72. H. Ford Douglas, speech at Framingham, Massachusetts, 4 July 1860, The Liberator (Boston), 13 July 1860;

  73. Ibid.; New York Herald, 8 July 1860; Boston correspondence, 7 July, New York Tribune, 9 July 1860.

  74. Annual report of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, quoted in the New York Herald, 30 Oct. 1860.

  75. Speech of 23 Sept. 1860, in Salem, Ohio, in C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers (5 vols.; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985–1992), 5:91.

  76. William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829–65 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 370.

  77. New York Times, 8 June 1860; Wendell Phillips, speech of 30 May 1860 in Boston, The Liberator (Boston), 8 June 1860. For more on Phillips’s criticism, see Chapter 8 of the present volume.

  78. New York Times, 4 Sept. 1860.

  79. Wendell Phillips, speech of 30 May 1860 in Boston, The Liberator (Boston), 8 June 1860.

  80. Joseph Hawley to Wendell Phillips, Hartford, 17 July 1860, fragment of a draft, Hawley Papers, DLC.

  81. New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, 11 Aug. 1860.

  82. New York Tribune, 4, 18 July 1860.

  83. Albany Evening Journal, 5 June 1860.

  84. Pierce to Phillips, Boston, 25 Oct. 1860, Phillips Papers, Harvard University.

  85. Higginson to Charles Francis Adams, Worcester, 22 Dec. 1860, Adams Family Papers; The Liberator (Boston), 28 Sept. 1860; Tilden G. Edelstein, Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 239.

  86. The Works of Charles Sumner (15 vols.; Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1874–1883), 5:225.

  87. New York Herald, 17 July 1860.

  88. Letter by “an intelligent gentleman in Illinois,” n.d., n.p., in The Liberator (Boston), n.d., copied in the New York World, 8 Aug. 1860.

  89. Dixon to Gideon Welles, Washington, 1 and 25 May 1860, Welles Papers, DLC.

  90. Speech by Dayton in New York, 19 Sept., New York Times, 20 Sept. 1860.

  91. Manchester Union Democrat, 22 May 1860.

  92. Boston Herald, n.d., copied in the Concord, New Hampshire, Independent Democrat, 24 May 1860.

  93. Louisville Journal, n.d., copied in the Cincinnati Commercial, 11 June 1860.

  94. Louisville correspondence by “Pontiac,” 26 May, New York Times, 2 June 1860.

  95. New Orleans Bee, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 June 1860.

  96. Washington correspondence, 20 May, New York Evening Post, 21 May 1860; speech at Manchester, New Hampshire, Cincinnati Commercial, 8 Aug. 1860.

  97. William Pennington, speech at Jersey City, 9 Aug., Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 16 Aug. 1860.

  98. Alfred E. Lewis to an unidentified correspondent, Philadelphia, 23 July 1860, Raleigh, North Carolina, Standard, n.d., copied in the New York Times, 28 Oct. 1860.

  99. Springfield correspondence, 4 Sept., New York Evening Post, 8 Sept. 1860.

  100. Reminiscences of John H. Littlefield in “Abe Lincoln’s Wisdom,” unidentified clipping, LMF.

  101. Albert Hale to Theron Baldwin, Springfield, 31 May 1860, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 155–156.

  102. Henry Quigley to John A. McClernand, Springfield, 8 Dec. 1860, McClernand Papers, IHi.

  103. Roland W. Diller’s recollections, in Paul Hull, “Lincoln in Springfield,” New York Mail and Express, 8 Feb. 1896, p. 15

  104. Interview with John Bunn, [15 Oct. 1914?], Jesse W. Weik, The Real Lincoln: A Portrait, ed. Michael Burlingame (1922; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 319.

  105. Thomas J. McCormack, ed., Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896 (2 vols.; Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch Press, 1909), 2:94.

  106. Charles C. Coffin in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1886), 168.

  107. Roy P. Basler et al., eds., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln [hereafter CWL] (8 vols. plus index; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 4:51.

  108. George Boutwell said this to Newton Bateman. Bateman, Abraham Lincoln: An Address (Galesburg, IL: Cadmus Club, 1899), 29.

  109. Springfield correspondence by G. G. F., 21 May, Independent Democrat (Concord, NH), 31 May 1860.

  110. Springfield correspondence, 19 May, Chicago Journal, 22 May 1860.

  111. Lincoln to Kelley, Springfield, 13 Oct. 1860, CWL, 4:127.

  112. The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (3 vols.; New York: McClure, 1907–1908), 2:188.

  113. Springfield correspondence, 19 May, Chicago Journal, 22 May 1860.

  114. Schurz, Reminiscences, 2:188–189.

  115. Robert H. Morris to Hamilton Fish, Chicago, 21 May 1860, Fish Papers, DLC.

  116. Dixon to Gideon Welles, Washington, 1 and 25 May 1860, Welles Papers, DLC.

  117. Letter by an unidentified author to “Rev. and Dear Sir,” Springfield, 24 Oct., New York Times, 6 Nov. 1860.

  118. E. B. Washburne to Lincoln, Washington, 20 May 1860, AL MSS DLC.

  119. Lincoln to George Ashmun, Springfield, 23 May 1860, CWL, 4:52.

  120. Lincoln to Chase, Springfield, 26 May 1860, ibid., 4:53.

  121. Chase to Wade, Cincinnati, 21 Nov. 1860, Wade Papers, DLC; Robert Hosea to Chase, Chicago, 18 May 1860, Thomas Spooner to Chase, Reading, Ohio, 21 May 1860, and David Taylor to Chase, Bryan, Ohio, 22 May 1860, Chase Papers, DLC.

  122. John A. Bingham to Chase, Washington, 2 June 1860, Chase Papers, DLC.

  123. Cleveland to Chase, Hampton, 28 May 1860, ibid.

  124. Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866 (Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1930, vol. 4; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933), 131 (entry for 19 May 1860).

  125. Henry T. Mudd to John G. Nicolay, St. Louis, 23 May 1860, Nicolay Papers, DLC.

  126. Browing to O. M. Hatch, Carthage, 1 June 1860, Hatch Papers, IHi; Bates to Browning, St. Louis, 11 June 1860, Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), 19 June 1860.

  127. Bates to Worthington G. Sne
then, St. Louis, 27 Oct. 1860, William Henry Seward Papers, University of Rochester.

  128. Cassius M. Clay to William C. Bryant, White Hall, Kentucky, 22 May 1860, Bryant-Godwin Papers, New York Public Library.

  129. Harrisburg correspondence, 25 May, Philadelphia Press, 26 May 1860; Cameron to Lincoln, Lochiel, 1 Aug. 1860, AL MSS DLC.

  130. Hamilton Fish to Lt. Henry A. Wise, New York, 24 May 1860, letterbooks, Fish Papers, DLC; Oliver B. Peirce to Thurlow Weed, Rome, New York, 27 Aug. 1860, Weed Papers, University of Rochester.

  131. C. S. Henry to Charles Sumner, Newburgh, New York, 20 May 1860, Sumner Papers, Harvard University.

  132. Clark B. Wheeler to Seward, New York, 25 May 1860, Seward Papers, University of Rochester.

  133. O[liver] B. Peirce to Seward, Rome, New York, 25 May 1860, ibid.; Oliver B. Peirce to Thurlow Weed, Rome, New York, 27 Aug. 1860, Weed Papers, University of Rochester.

  134. Henry A. Bloss to Seward, Rochester, 18 May 1860, Seward Papers, University of Rochester.

  135. John L. Cunningham to Thurlow Weed, Essex, New York, 2 Aug. 1860, Weed Papers, University of Rochester.

  136. Gilbert C. Davidson to Seward, Albany, 18 May 1860, telegram, Seward Papers, University of Rochester.

  137. Frank M. Coxe to Seward, Philadelphia, 22 May 1860, ibid.

  138. Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State (2 vols.; New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 1:453.

  139. Worthington G. Snethen to Seward, Baltimore, 20 May 1860, Seward Papers, University of Rochester.

  140. Chicago correspondence by G[eorge] D[awson], 19 May, Albany Evening Journal, 21 May 1860.

  141. Correspondence by Joseph Howard from the Steamboat Metropolitan on the Mississippi River, 20 May, New York Times, 25 May 1860.

  142. Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1885), 168.

  143. John M. Palmer, interviewed by J. McCan Davis, undated typescript, Ida Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.

  144. Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed Including His Autobiography and a Memoir (2 vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 2:292.